Easmon family

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Easmon family
John Farrell Easmon.jpg
John Farrell Easmon (seated) and his brother Albert Whiggs Easmon
Current region Freetown, Sierra Leone
Place of origin United States
Founded
  • Arrival in Sierra Leone
  • 11 March 1792 (1792-03-11), Freetown
  • 231 years ago
Founder William Easmon
Members
Connected members
Distinctions

The Easmon family or the Easmon Medical Dynasty is a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African-American descent originally based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Easmon family has ancestral roots in the United States, and in particular Savannah, Georgia and other states in the American South. There are several descendants of the Sierra Leonean family in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as in the Ghanaian cities of Accra and Kumasi. The family produced several medical doctors beginning with John Farrell Easmon, the medical doctor who coined the term Blackwater fever and wrote the first clinical diagnosis of the disease linking it to malaria and Albert Whiggs Easmon, who was a leading gynaecologist in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Several members of the family were active in business, academia, politics, the arts including music, cultural dance, playwriting and literature, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and anti-colonial activism against racism.

Contents

The Easmon family was among the wealthy, upper-class and aristocratic Creole families, known locally as the Aristos and descended from one of the original black American founding families which established the Colony of Sierra Leone in 1792.

History

The surname Easmon is a variation of the English surname "Eastman" derived from "Eastmond". The Easmon family descends from the 1,192 African Americans known in Sierra Leone as the Nova Scotian Settlers who established the Colony of Sierra Leone and the city of Freetown. The earliest known progenitor of the Easmon family was William Easmon, (d. 1831), an African American trader possibly from North Carolina, who was one of the original Nova Scotian Settler emigrés from Nova Scotia, Canada, who established Freetown, Sierra Leone on 11 March 1792. [1] William Easmon had at least one son with his first wife, Mary Easmon and had several children, including Walter Richard Easmon (1824–1883), with his second wife, Jane Easmon. Walter Richard Easmon was a merchant based in the Republic of Guinea who was married three times. Walter Richard Easmon was the father of three children with his second wife, Mary Ann MacCormac, including John Farrell Easmon. Walter Easmon was also the father of Albert Whiggs Easmon with Mah Serah, a Susu woman from the Republic of Guinea.

Several branches of the Easmon family intermarried with Creole families of African American, Jamaican Maroon, Northern Irish, French, and English descent including the Boyle, Cuthbert, Elliott, George, MacCormac, Maillat, and Smith, and Spilsbury families. The Easmon family also extends to Ghana and branches of the family in Ghana intermarried mainly with Ga-Dangme families of Sierra Leone Creole, Danish, Scottish, and Welsh descent including the Dove, Augustt, and Evans families.

Members of the Easmon family were prominent in the medical field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Foremost among the nineteenth century doctors of the family were John Farrell Easmon and Albert Whiggs Easmon. The twentieth century was largely dominated by the careers of Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon, who served in the colonial medical service and Raymond Sarif Easmon who established himself in private practice.

Contributions

First generation

Second generation

Third generation

Commemoration and recognition

Recognition

Commemoration

Notable members

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Farrell Easmon</span> Sierra Leonean Creole doctor (1859–1900

John Farrell Easmon, MRCS, LM, LKQCP, MD, CMO, was a prominent Sierra Leonean Creole medical doctor in the British Gold Coast who served as Chief Medical Officer during the 1890s. Easmon was the only West African to be promoted to Chief Medical Officer and he served in this role with distinction during the last decade of the 19th century. Easmon was a botanist and a noted expert on the study and treatment of tropical diseases. In 1884, he wrote a pamphlet entitled The Nature and Treatment of Blackwater Fever, which noted for the first time the relationship between blackwater fever and malaria. Easmon coined the term "blackwater fever" in his pamphlet on the malarial disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nova Scotian Settlers</span> Historical ethnic group that settled Sierra Leone

The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers, were African Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African Americans, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Sarif Easmon</span>

Raymond Sarif Easmon was a prominent Sierra Leonean doctor known for his acclaimed literary work and political agitation.

Albert Whiggs Easmon was a Sierra Leonean Creole medical doctor and the half-brother of Dr John Farrell Easmon. Easmon was among the first group of Sierra Leoneans to qualify as a medical doctor after getting a degree from Edinburgh University. He became the leading gynaecologist in Freetown, Sierra Leone and had an extensive private practice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edna Elliott-Horton</span> Sierra Leonean scholar and activisist (1904–1994)

Edna Elliott-Horton was the second West African woman from a British colony to receive a university degree after the Nigerian physician Agnes Yewande Savage, who received a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1929. A Sierra Leonean, Elliott-Horton became the first West African woman to complete a BA degree in the liberal arts, after graduating from Howard University in 1932, where Dr. Edward Mayfield Boyle, her maternal uncle, had graduated as a medical doctor. Elliott-Horton was a political activist who challenged the colonial authorities in Sierra Leone through her participation in the West African Youth League which was formally established in her living-room.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Odamtten Easmon</span> Ghanaian surgeon and academic (1913–1994)

Charles Odamtten Easmon or C. O. Easmon, popularly known as Charlie Easmon, was a medical doctor and academic who became the first Ghanaian to formally qualify as a surgeon specialist and the first Dean of the University of Ghana Medical School. Easmon performed the first successful open-heart surgery in Ghana in 1964, and modern scholars credit him as the "Father of Cardiac Surgery in West Africa". Easmon was of Sierra Leone Creole, Ga-Dangme, African-American, Danish, and Irish ancestry and a member of the distinguished Easmon family, a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African-American descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Benjamin Ageh Wellesley Cole</span> Sierra Leonean medical doctor

Robert Benjamin Ageh Wellesley Cole, was a Sierra Leonean medical doctor who was the first West African to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Smith (surgeon)</span>

Robert Smith FRCSE (1840–1885), also known as Bob Smith, was a Sierra Leonean medical doctor who served as an Assistant Colonial Surgeon in Sierra Leone during the late nineteenth century. Smith was the first African to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh after completing his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon</span>

Macormack Charles Farrell Easmon, OBE, popularly known as M. C. F. Easmon or "Charlie", was a Sierra Leone Creole born in Accra in the Gold Coast, where his father John Farrell Easmon, a prominent Creole medical doctor, was working at the time. He belonged to the notable Easmon family of Sierra Leone, a Creole family of African-American descent.

Easmon is a patronymic surname of English origin and is a variation of the surname Eastman. The surname is typically ascribed to a notable medical dynasty of Sierra Leone Creole descent. Notable people with the surname include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sierra Leone Creole people</span> Ethnic group of Sierra Leone

The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.Sierra Leone.

The MacCormac family is a family of Northern Irish ancestry that originates in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The MacCormac family produced four medical doctors and at least three members of the family received knighthoods during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The family is of Ulster ancestry and perhaps also has some distant English ancestry through Colonel Joseph Hall of Hall Place, Lurgan.

Charles Easmon may refer to:

John MacCormac, was a distinguished Irish timber merchant who pioneered the timber trade in the Colony of Sierra Leone. John MacCormac was also the founder of the first Free Will Baptist church in Sierra Leone and served as a member of His Majesty's Colonial Council and was styled with the title of 'Honorable'. MacCormac was the grandfather and namesake of Dr John Farrell Easmon, the Chief Medical Officer of the Gold Coast Colony who coined the term 'Blackwater Fever' and wrote the first English-based clinical diagnosis of Blackwater fever.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango</span> Sierra Leonean missionary and artist

Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango was a Sierra Leonean missionary and artist who was the first West African to earn a diploma from the Royal College of Art. She was the niece of Adelaide Casely-Hayford and was a personal friend of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Simango was also a member of the prominent Sierra Leone Creole Easmon family.

Edward Mayfield Boyle was a Sierra Leone Creole medical doctor who attended Harvard Medical School. Boyle, was one of the first West Africans to attend Howard University College of Medicine and was the maternal uncle of Edna Elliott-Horton, who was possibly the first West African woman to graduate from Howard University.

Gold Coast Euro-Africans were a historical demographic based in coastal urban settlements in colonial Ghana, that arose from unions between European men and African women from the late 15th century – the decade between 1471 and 1482, until the mid-20th century, circa 1957, when Ghana attained its independence. In this period, different geographic areas of the Gold Coast were politically controlled at various times by the Portuguese, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Dutch and the British. There are also records of merchants of other European nationalities such as the Spaniards, French, Italians and Irish, operating along the coast, in addition to American sailors and traders from New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Euro-Africans were influential in intellectual, technocratic, artisanal, commercial and public life in general, actively participating in multiple fields of scholarly and civic importance. Scholars have referred to this Euro-African population of the Gold Coast as "mulattos", "mulatofoi" and "owulai" among other descriptions. The term, owula conveys contemporary notions of "gentlemanliness, learning and urbanity" or "a salaried big man" in the Ga language. The cross-cultural interactions between Europeans and Africans were mercantile-driven and an avenue to boost social capital for economic and political gain i.e. "wealth and power." The growth and development of Christianity during the colonial period also instituted motifs of modernity vis-à-vis Euro-African identity. This model created a spectrum of practices, ranging from a full celebration of native African customs to a total embrace and acculturation of European culture.

The Smith family is a Sierra Leone Creole family of English, Jamaican Maroon and Liberated African descent based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Smiths were first-generation Sierra Leone Creoles of Gold Coast Euro-African and Caribbean origin who settled in Sierra Leone during the early 19th century. There are several descendants of the family in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as in the Ghanaian cities of Accra and Cape Coast. Several members of the family were active in business, women's education, civil administration, the arts, medicine, poetry, the judiciary, cultural studies, Pan-Africanism and anti-colonial activism.

References

  1. Gates, Professor Henry Louis Jr.; Akyeampong, Professor Emmanuel; Niven, Mr Steven J. (2012-02-02). Dictionary of African Biography. OUP USA. ISBN   9780195382075. Archived from the original on 2017-10-29.

Sources